“Col,” I breathed.
“I told you to stay in your room,” he growled, his eyes a wall of ice.
“I was hungry.”
He moved then, slowly, like a lion stalking its prey, his eyes never leaving mine as the muscle in his jaw hardened. As he rounded the island, my heartrate picked up, my lips parting as something other than fear took over.
“You were hungry,” he deadpanned, his voice furious with disbelief.
I nodded as he came to stand two feet away from me. He was dressed in black sweats and a black hoodie. Even he was cold in this big dark house. After a moment of staring at me, his eyes scanned the mess on the countertop. He gestured to the sugar and flour. “So you just took it upon yourself to come down here and make a mess in my kitchen?”
I ignored him, not caring about the mess I intended to clean up. “Is he gone?”
“Karina—”
“Col,is he gone?” My voice shook at the end of the question, and I hated that it did, but Romano scared the fuck out of me. I looked to my feet.
“Yes.”
I let out a breath. Thank Jesus.
When I met his eyes again, he was scowling down at me in annoyance.
“Then what’s your problem?” I snapped. The devil had been exorcized from the building, so why the hell was he mad at me? “You said I could go anywhere I liked.”
“I told you to stay in your room,” he hissed, his jaw still clenched.
My eyes dropped a fraction, focusing on the pale skin of his face in contrast with the dark tattoos on his neck. I ached to run my fingers along that jaw. He could cut glass with it if he wanted to. Hell, he'd been slicing my heart to pieces for years, but I still ached for him. To touch his skin. To kiss up and down that jaw and that tattooed neck. To hear him say my name in pleasure…
“I was hungry,” I repeated, clearing my throat as I met his eyes again, mentally kicking myself for my thoughts. I was supposed to hate him.
He looked to the ceiling, running a tattooed hand down his face. He sighed through his nose, the veins in his neck popping. When he looked back down at me, those blue eyes darkened.“You listen to me when I tell you to do something,” he clipped, his control slipping.
Anger coursed through me. You know what?Fuck it.
“I was hungry!” I shouted back, reaching for the bowl of flour. Without a second thought, I threw the powder at him. His all-black outfit was now covered in white, his face covered too.
He let out a breath, sending even more into the air between us.
He stared at me.
Speechless.
I nodded. “I was hungry. Then you made me angry…hangry is not a good thing with me,” I rambled on, dropping the bowl back onto the counter with a bang and tossing some of my hair over my shoulder. Underneath a sheet of white, those icy eyes glared.
He was going to kill me.
I was sure of it now.
A smile played on my lips as a thought occurred to me.
“At least when you kill me now, you won’t look like a hitman…more like Frosty the Snowman…” I couldn’t finish the sentence as I began laughing.
In a flash, he yanked the bag of flour I left out, stepped to me, and dumped all of it on top of my head. I gasped and coughed. Flour fluttered around us like snow on Christmas morning as we stood toe to toe, glaring at each other. After a moment, I looked down and shook my hair, more flour falling to the floor.
“And you look like a crackhead,” he deadpanned. Did he just say ‘crackhead’?
I looked up at him wide-eyed, and something happened.
